Alexa Wants to Work on Her Memory – How Well Do You Actually Remember it?

(Last Updated On: October 4, 2018)

Ruhi Sarikaya, Director of Applied Science at Amazon, detailed the future improvements of Alexa. The digital assistant will have a memory and he will understand the context better. These features are expected this year.

Those who use a digital assistant have the impression to start from scratch with each request, the memory option of Alexa will solve this problem. Specifically, it provides information and is asked to memorize it.

After that, you just have to make a new request for Alexa to remember the saved preferences. This feature could also be useful for remembering important dates like birthdays.

Alexa would understand the context

Today, with voice assistants, the answers are not clear when the questions are not specific enough. To remedy this, the team develops interactions in two rounds. The assistant would understand the request, even if the statement no longer includes any pronouns.

(1) “Alexa, what’s the weather like in new york?” → (2) “And this weekend?” According to Mr. Sarikaya, they hope to succeed in connecting two different contexts such as weather and traffic: (1) “Alexa, what’s the weather like in California?” → (2) “How long does it take to get there?”

Amazon will achieve this feat by adding in-depth learning models to its understanding matrix of spoken language. Alexa would understand the intentions of customers.